Emblematic ecstasy
Excerpt from the book 'Théâtre d'amour. The garden of love and its delights'. By Carsten-Peter Warncke
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Modern-day research puts the total number of sheets making up the Lascivie series at sixteen and has identified a number of copies by Dutch artists. Four such copies are contained in our anthology (fols. 121, 136, 137, 143). (...)
Between these engravings we find series and individual sheets whose subjects derived not from the educated canon of classical literature but from the popular iconography of the day. An example here is the ten-part Ages of Man series designed and engraved once again by Crispin de Passe the Elder in Cologne (fols. 122-130). These are not personifications, but genre-like scenes which characterize, in actions, events and poses, the successive decades of a man's life (the picture of the Sixty-year-old is missing). Themes all too familiar from real life also included the follies of love and in particular the buying of love with money, as treated here in a short series of three engravings executed in Haarlem around 1600 by Jakob Goltzius, a brother of the important Hendrick Goltzius, on the basis of designs by Pieter de Jode (fols. 115-117). Their inclusion of verse couplets lends them the moralizing character typical of genre painting in the Netherlands, and thereby underlines the close link between genre painting and emblem art.
While genre painting (so-called only since more recent times) emerged as a separate discipline as late as the end of the 16th century, its most celebrated forerunners included Pieter Bruegel the Elder, known as "Peasant Bruegel" for his many portrayals of subjects from Dutch daily life. Bruegel's famous Proverb paintings are here interpreted in twelve engravings by Hieronymous Wierix and Pieter van der Heyden, originally published in Bruegel's native city of Antwerp in 1568 and only rarely surviving (as here) in a complete set (fols. 80-91). They are thereby the oldest engravings in the album. (...)
Linked somewhat more closely to the overall theme of our volume is another series of twelve engravings, which together illustrate a number of idiomatic expressions and rather crude double-entendres passing between men and women (fols. 62-73). Vulgarity was in those days considered a sign of commonness, since in the hierarchical mindset of the age illiteracy, uncouthness and social inferiority all went hand in hand. This attitude is encapsulated in the emblem of three rabbits combined as if into a coat of arms symbolizing fecundity and promiscuity (fol. 78), an image whose origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages. It is preceded by a warning about the fickleness of fortune, the ups and downs of life in the shape of a nobleman and a fool coupled together into a rotating coat of arms (fol. 77). (...)
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Modern-day research puts the total number of sheets making up the Lascivie series at sixteen and has identified a number of copies by Dutch artists. Four such copies are contained in our anthology (fols. 121, 136, 137, 143). (...)
Between these engravings we find series and individual sheets whose subjects derived not from the educated canon of classical literature but from the popular iconography of the day. An example here is the ten-part Ages of Man series designed and engraved once again by Crispin de Passe the Elder in Cologne (fols. 122-130). These are not personifications, but genre-like scenes which characterize, in actions, events and poses, the successive decades of a man's life (the picture of the Sixty-year-old is missing). Themes all too familiar from real life also included the follies of love and in particular the buying of love with money, as treated here in a short series of three engravings executed in Haarlem around 1600 by Jakob Goltzius, a brother of the important Hendrick Goltzius, on the basis of designs by Pieter de Jode (fols. 115-117). Their inclusion of verse couplets lends them the moralizing character typical of genre painting in the Netherlands, and thereby underlines the close link between genre painting and emblem art.
While genre painting (so-called only since more recent times) emerged as a separate discipline as late as the end of the 16th century, its most celebrated forerunners included Pieter Bruegel the Elder, known as "Peasant Bruegel" for his many portrayals of subjects from Dutch daily life. Bruegel's famous Proverb paintings are here interpreted in twelve engravings by Hieronymous Wierix and Pieter van der Heyden, originally published in Bruegel's native city of Antwerp in 1568 and only rarely surviving (as here) in a complete set (fols. 80-91). They are thereby the oldest engravings in the album. (...)
Linked somewhat more closely to the overall theme of our volume is another series of twelve engravings, which together illustrate a number of idiomatic expressions and rather crude double-entendres passing between men and women (fols. 62-73). Vulgarity was in those days considered a sign of commonness, since in the hierarchical mindset of the age illiteracy, uncouthness and social inferiority all went hand in hand. This attitude is encapsulated in the emblem of three rabbits combined as if into a coat of arms symbolizing fecundity and promiscuity (fol. 78), an image whose origins can be traced back to the Middle Ages. It is preceded by a warning about the fickleness of fortune, the ups and downs of life in the shape of a nobleman and a fool coupled together into a rotating coat of arms (fol. 77). (...)
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Théâtre d'amour
Hardcover, 18.5 x 25.3 cm (7.3 x 10 in.), 352 pages
$ 34.99
$ 34.99
A heartwarming album of romantic illustrations
Fol. 112: An allegory of Vanitas